Abstract
In previous chapters I have referred to the remarkable changes in morphology and especially in physiology exhibited in the life cycles of the African trypanosomes (see Diagram V), causative agents of sleeping sickness in humans and of various diseases of cattle and other domestic animals. Especially striking is the switch in metabolism from the glycerophosphate oxidase system of the bloodstream form to the cytochrome-mediated respiration of the insect form (procyclic), accompanied by loss of infectivity. These changes seem to be mediated by changes in the single mitochondrion. This mitochondrion is unique in having a special region, always immediately adjacent to the basal body of the flagellum, that contains “the most unusual DNA in nature” (as P. Borst has aptly termed it). There is so much DNA that it can be seen by light microscopy after staining with Feulgen or Giemsa stain. Indeed, this was the first extranuclear DNA ever noted, long before DNA had been demonstrated in mitochondria and long before anyone suspected that the kinetoplast is actually a part of the mitochondrion of trypanosomes.
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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Trager, W. (1986). The Kinetoplast and Kinetoplast DNA. In: Living Together. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9465-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9465-9_11
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